Amazon CEO says there’s no “silver bullet” for curbing worker injuries

Amazon does not have a “silver bullet” to reduce the repetitive stress, strain and other injuries suffered by its frontline workers, but the company is working to improve security, CEO Andy Jassy said on Thursday .

Jassy’s pledge reached its first letter to shareholders since he succeeded Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as CEO, and just days after the release of a report he found nearly half of all injuries in U.S. warehouses last year it went to Amazon.

Critics of Amazon have expressed concern about the physical toll and the risk of work injuries at one of its delivery centers. The company employs a third of U.S. warehouse workers, but is “responsible for nearly half (49%) of all injuries in the warehouse industry,” according to the Center for Strategic Organization, a coalition of trade unions.

Amazon workers in the United States suffered more than 34,000 “serious injuries” at work last year, a rate more than double that in warehouses owned by other companies, the groups said.

Jassy acknowledged an increase in the number of injured as tens of thousands of employees joined his workforce, but argued that the rate at which his people were injured was “slightly higher than average. of our storage partners “while a little lower among their messengers and delivery. workers.

“But we’re not looking to be average. We want to be the best in the class,” Jassy wrote. Amazon has programs to help workers avoid repetitive stress injuries, he said, adding, “We still have a long way to go.”

Jassy’s letter follows the vote by warehouse workers on Staten Island in New York City earlier this month for form a union – Amazon’s first installation in the US that took steps to get organized.

In his last letter to shareholders last year, Bezos stated, “I think we need to do a better job for employees.”

Last year, Amazon announced a $ 12 million, five-year deal with the National Security Council to find ways to stop the most common injuries in its stores.